This morning we all did one same thing.
To get here, we had to cross many roads, walking or by car.
I hope that from now on crossing the road
is transformed into a new experience.
So I invite you all to cross the road with me.
I am going to cross from this corner to that one.
Cars come from both directions. Can you see it?
The little man is on white, which means I can cross, so I go ahead.
Ah, there’s a car coming and its turn signal is on, he wants to turn here,
just where I want to cross.
Let’s freeze the scene in that moment.
What would happen if they all followed the law?
It’s simple, the driver stops, the pedestrian crosses.
The pedestrian goes along, then the driver, and that’s it.
There’s no negotiation, no dialogue.
Well, in reality we had this dialogue 80 years ago
when we agreed the prioritize pedestrians in crossings.
But that’s what should happen.
Look at all that does happen.
The pedestrian thinks: What should I do, cross or not cross?
The little man is on white, but if this guy starts?
The driver thinks: Ugh, I have to brake just now,
when I had a green wave going.
Ultimately, what ends up happening?
What happens is the pedestrian waits and the driver passes.
And the pedestrian waits for all the cars to pass and only then
if the little man is still on white, crosses.
Sometimes the pedestrian puts one foot in the asphalt,
and the other one, trying to start taking some ground.
Usually the driver ignores this.
But let’s suppose this morning the driver woke up feeling sensitive
and wants to let the pedestrian cross.
What do us Argentines do when we want to let a pedestrian cross?
And what does the pedestrian do?
He crosses.
And while he does, what does he do?
He signals thanks. And hurries, so that the driver doesn’t change his mind.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
What sort of typically Argentine choreography did we just describe?
It’s like a tango, no?
Because it might end up well, or it might end up badly,
but we always suffer.
Let’s put a name on this, let’s call it “the corner dance”.
And how do you dance the corner dance?
The pedestrian shows interest, the driver accepts and brakes,
they meet eyes and connect, but what’s necessary is
the driver’s visible gesture, no?
As if he was saying: “I, the driver, allow you the grace
of crossing through the pedestrian crossing”.
The pedestrian, as we said, accepts and expresses his gratitude:
“Oh drive, lord of the automobiles
and knight of all means of transport, I thank you for your generosity”
and crosses.
Only then the driver is satisfied.
What would have happened if the driver hadn’t signaled thanks?
"Can you believe that?
I let him cross and he says nothing”.
Attention to the driver’s anger, it’s telling us something.
It probably indicates us that the driver
feels he did something good above from what’s expected from him.
My name is José Nesis, I’m a pedestrian, a driver
and for many years I’ve been trying to understand
why in the country of smart guys we kill each other like idiots.
(Applause)
Also, I’m part of a team that thinks the street
is the quintessential space of social intersection,
that it’s the expression of what we are as a society.
And it’s logical to think that if we improve as such
we’ll improve in the street.
We believe that the contrary is also true.
If we improve in the street, we’ll improve as a society.
In Argentina, at least 2 people die every day
from what we call “insecurity,”
that is, in robberies and kidnappings.
In that same time, between 15 to 20 people lose their lives
in traffic accidents, that is, almost 10 times more.
However, those 2 deaths impact us much more than those 20.
Why?
Why does our brain deceive us into believing the risk of dying
in a kidnapping or in a robbery is much higher than the one of
dying, or killing, in a traffic accident?
Another singularity of traffic accidents
— that for the most part are not accidents, that needs to be said—
is that there are no beneficiaries.
In corruption, the beneficiaries are the corrupt,
in drug trafficking, the drug traffickers,
in general felony, the beneficiaries are the felons.
In traffic accidents, nobody is.
There are no beneficiaries and neither there is a mob
that plans traffic accidents.
Therefore, if not we don’t even have to fight against
a powerful external enemy,
why is it so hard?
There’s a Colombian philosopher and mathematician called Antanas Mockus,
he was twice mayor of Bogotá and changed that city’s culture.
He both lowered crime and traffic accidents.
He was interested in understanding how people relate to rules,
and how do we get to follow agreements.
He was based on the idea that our behavior
is determined by three main regulators:
law, morality, and culture,
that can be expressed positively or negatively
leading to some possibilities we’ll see now.
For example, we can follow laws,
even laws we don’t like,
because we value the effort put behind them.
In this case, the electoral, deliberative process.
Other times we follow rules out of fear of the legal sanction.
It may also be that we do it
because we feel good when we do.
Or because we want to avoid the feeling of guilt
that invades us when we don’t.
Another reason to comply is the search of social prestige,
of external approval, or simply of avoiding its opposite;
disapproval, public scrutiny.
As we see, we choose not to follow rules not for a single motive,
there’s not a single mind.
There’s an experiment that was done many times
with audiences like this one.
We asked people the following:
Which of these six options represents you better?
And the most chosen one is this one: people say
they follow rules because they feel good when they do.
Then we ask those same people
why do they think the majority of the population follows rules
and the most chosen option inevitably this one:
out of fear of punishment.
That means that those of us here are wonderful people,
we follow the rules
because we feel good when we do, we’re awesome.
Instead, the majority of people outside,
those that couldn’t come here,
the majority of the population, they comply out of fear of punishment,
they just behave that way.
The problem is that this is the belief that policymakers have in mind
when they plan policies like a road safety campaign.
As we said, if there’s not a single mind
there can’t be a single campaign
much less one based almost exclusively in the fear of punishment.
You see, there’s almost 10,000 of us here
and I don’t see anyone smoking.
I’m sure that more than one here is dying to smoke.
Why don’t you do it?
Because it’s forbidden?
How many of you were ever punished
by the sanctions contemplated in the anti-tobacco law?
Or even better, how many of you know at least one person
that has been sanctioned by the anti-tobacco law?
Therefore, we have a case of a 100% successful norm
and practically no punishments.
Unless we consider that it’s because of the signs
over there that say “no smoking”.
I recently travelled to Spain
and when I got to the Barajas airport
I asked a policeman where the migration line for foreigners was.
He replied: “Argentine, right?”
I said “Yes, how did you know? By the accent?”
“No,” he said. “Because you Argentines
are the only ones who ask even when there’s this huge sign above”.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
And it’s true, there was a huge sign with precise information.
It was unmistakable.
In what moment did we Argentines become suspicious of what’s said
in signs, in notices?
Was it when we discovered the 10:24 train to Constitución
departs at 10:35, at 11:53, at 9:00?
Or when the price of a product changes whether you get a receipt or not?
Well, since 1930 with Uriburu and up to Videla
we were told we had to call president of the nation
a military officer that that usurped the government office.
(Applause)
In any way, we don’t trust signs, boards.
And deep down we’re a bit proud of this suspicion,
signs are for the dumb guys.
We’re different.
For us, if the sign is the norm, then we go to the person
that’s watching it and we tell them:
“Yeah, the sign says that but how is it really here?”
(Laughter)
We have to recognize that many times the signs are either not there,
or misplaced, which ends up giving them
a merely illustrative function.
The “stop” sign
to us means “stops, sort of.”
(Laughter)
The problem is that this exercise we do
of free deliberation and of reinvention of the norm in every corner,
is not only dangerous, but it also takes from us
an enormous amount of energy.
Well, what can we do?
Can we do something?
Remember our corner dance?
When we ask the pedestrian why he doesn’t he cross,
he says he’s waiting for the cars to pass.
When we ask the driver why doesn’t he stop
he says a car is going to come from behind and crash him,
that’s going to honk at him, that’s going to insult him.
The car from behind, that was the problem.
Sure, because if the car from behind kept the stopping distance,
the one in front stops slowly and our pedestrian happily crosses.
Issue settled.
That’s the recipient of our campaigns: the car from behind.
But, who’s the car from behind?
The car from behind can be any of us.
The care from behind can be the State,
the car from behind can be culture.
The care from behind isn’t even a car,
the card from behind is a third party, and it’s a witness.
It’s the piece we were missing so that we can talk about context
and it’s the possibility of leaving this game of opposites
that seems so mortifying.
Let’s return to our corner dance for one last time.
Up to now we had two main protagonists:
the pedestrian and the driver.
We now have a third one: the car from behind.
You can be any of them,
but you can also be another pedestrian,
you can the lady in the flower shop,
the guy in the newsstand,
you can be a girl going in the backseat
or a person that stares from the window of a bus.
You can be protagonists or you can be witnesses.
But you’re part of the corner dance which is more than a traffic issue,
it’s a social choreography.
Many times people tell me, do you know how’s it’s going to be solved?
With the autonomous car.
They drive themselves, coordinate among them, so goodbye corner dance.
Maybe, but until them we have an opportunity
to change our culture.
A window of one or two decades perhaps,
because we’re definitely not ready for the future
and we have yet to see if we’re ready for the present.
It’s very hard to follow a system of rules
when someone feels they’re the only one doing so
and, in fact, nobody wants to be the first one to follow the law.
That’s why our success will depend in our ability
to generate contexts
where following our agreements is something natural.
Contexts in which for example
a driver that doesn’t let a pedestrian cross
is something so unthinkable as me lighting up a cigarette here.
We tend to think big changes require massive efforts,
but sometimes the solution is in one small detail
like the domino the pushes the next one
and in one given moment the change becomes visible.
Big policies are not made in the desks of presidents,
in a top-down manner, they’re built in a corner
or in a thousand corners and then laws come to give them form.
One thing I do know,
if we improve in the street, we improve as a society.
Let’s improve in the street.
Thank you.
(Applause)